Bile Spill

Rachel Abrams

October 14, 2010 6:58 PM

Maureen Dowd screens “Fair Game,” the new Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson bio-pic, and gives us an account: if we are to rely upon her (a riskyish venture), the flick peddles a glammed-up Vanity-Fairy-tale of a damsel in distress defended against the forces of evil bravely if perhaps overbearingly by her manly husband/protector (oh, straight up the heart-fluttering MoDo alley).

This version of the lives of these two Washington celebutaries provides the Pulitzer-prize-winning columnist and plagiarist an opportunity to re-douse her favorite targets, the torturing malefactors George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, etc., with more than even the usual amount of spewage from her sulphur pot:

Karl Rove has put together a potent operation to use anonymous donors to flood the airwaves with attack ads against Democrats. And a gaunt-looking Dick Cheney is out of the hospital and back to raking in money defending torture and pre-emptive war.

. . . the movie is a vivid reminder of one of the most egregious abuses of power in history, and there are deliciously diabolical turns by actors playing . . . David Addington and Rove. Plame’s C.I.A. bosses are portraits in cravenness, cutting her loose at the moment she starts receiving death threats and her Iraqi sources become endangered.

Whew! Maureen apparently swallowed an especially bitter pill over the weekend! And yet, when manliness waxes, you can’t keep the perpetually disappointed Dowdic soul from rising to meet it: “Costumed with lush mane and round paunch, Sean Penn is well suited to capture Wilson’s arrogance and mouthiness, while also showing his honesty, brazenness, sly charm and fierce love of wife and country.” Uh huh.

Valerie and Joe “were the Girl and Boy Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” Miss Dowd admonishes, “and we should all remember what flew out.” Thou hast said a mouthful, Maureen.